Consumers are spending a significant amount of time listening to AM/FM radio stations during the course of the day, including when traveling in the automobiles. However, listening to AM/FM radio stations is a passive experience, where the listeners have a choice of either listening to what is being broadcast or simply changing channels. There is little interaction between the listeners and radio stations. For example, the listeners have no means of interacting with the radio stations to register their interest in the program being broadcast other than calling the radio stations. Similarly, the radio stations have few means of learning their audience interest directly from their listeners.
Traditionally, AM/FM radio stations have relied on listeners calling the radio stations to register their interest or surveys of a sample population of listeners, conducted by third parties such as Nielsen Media, to determine their listener interests and the reach of their audio programs. However, such surveys can be misleading due to various factors, such as how the sample population of radio listeners were chosen for the survey, how the sampled population understands terms such as “listening” when responding to queries of the survey, etc.
Among teaching a variety of other things, certain aspects of the inventions herein have embodiments that may satisfy one or more of the above-described issues.